Perhaps the most enduring image of all, however, is that of the legendary “Cape Codder” himself. He appears in many guises: as a Portuguese “banker” fisherman trawling for cod in a small dory off the Georges Banks; a Truro “mooncusser” salvaging the booty from an 18th-century pirate ship wrecked on the Cape’s “backside;” a Wampanoag Indian gathering alewives, or migratory herring, in spring to plant with her corn; a Wellfleet whaler casting his harpoon at a right whale in the icy Arctic seas; a Yankee clipper ship skipper from Brewster or Dennis helping to open up the China Trade or setting a transoceanic sailing record that still stands today; a Cape Verdean girl picking ripe wine-colored cranberries in the long rows of a Harwich bog; a Chatham Life Saving Serviceman pulling his surfboat through a fierce January gale to make a daring rescue of the crew of a vessel grounded on one of the Cape’s treacherous shoals; a Provincetown rum-runner in his weather-beaten dragger eluding a Coast Guard cutter in the fog; an “old salt” in sou’wester and knee boots spinning yarns in Barnstable or Rock Harbor. These and other versions of the protean Cape Codder have been celebrated and recorded in story and song since the founding of this country and have become a part of our history and folklore. In fact, few if any rural areas of comparable size have been written, painted, and sung about so richly over the years as the Cape landscape and its inhabitants. [Illustration: (Boathouse and yacht.)] [Illustration: =Pages 10-11=: _Because the Outer Cape is such a narrow strip of land with the Atlantic on one side and Cape Cod Bay on the other, sunrises and sunsets can be spectacular_. _Here the sun rises over Eastham’s Nauset Marsh, which was a harbor when Champlain explored the area in 1606._] [Illustration: (Sea shells.)]